Clarinet Secrets contains concepts that have been repeatedly and successfully used with students over a period of 20 years of teaching. Each strategy is explained on two facing pages with accompanying graphics, photos, and musical examples.

This second edition of Clarinet Secrets is a compilation of Distinguished Professor Michele Gingras’s acclaimed books that spearheaded Rowman & Littlefield’s Music Secrets series: Clarinet Secrets and More Clarinet Secrets. It is the result of Gingras’s thirty years of hands-on experience spent in the clarinet studio working with students. Learn practical and technical secrets about rapid tonguing and double-tonguing; circular breathing; sight-reading and transposition; reed fixing and repair equipment; improving tone, intonation, technique, and musicianship; contemporary techniques; classical and non-classical performance; performance anxiety; auditioning; career planning and marketability; and more. The concepts are discussed in a straightforward way, explained clearly, and illustrated with photos, diagrams, and musical examples. Easy to use and intended for the intermediate and advanced musician, this second edition of Clarinet Secrets is perfect for students in a class or private situation, professionals, or instructors engaged in pedagogical research.

It takes considerable patience, hard work, and perseverance to achieve mastery on a musical instrument. More Clarinet Secrets: 100 Quick Tips for the Advanced Clarinetist contains a wealth of information designed to turn clarinetists into informed musicians, offering them the tools to compete in the music world. Topics discussed include technique, tone and intonation, musicianship, reeds and equipment, repertoire, musicians' health, and the music profession. Gingras also supplies tips on such matters as college auditions, website design, and self-marketing. Advanced high school clarinetists, college-level clarinetists, and seasoned professionals will all find More Clarinet Secrets a valuable read.

Modeled on the brilliant approach first formulated by distinguished professor of music and master clarinetist Michele Gingras in Clarinet Secrets and More Clarinet Secrets (both available from Scarecrow Press), Music Secrets for the Advanced Musician: A Scarecrow Press Music Series is designed for instrumentalists, singers, conductors, composers, and other instructors and professionals seeking a quick set of pointers to improve their work as performers and producers of music. Easy to use and intended for the advanced musician, contributions to the Music Secrets series fill a niche for those who have moved beyond what beginners and intermediate practitioners need. In Oboe Secrets: 75 Performance Strategies for the Advanced Oboist and English Horn Player, Jacqueline Leclair tackles the oboe’s reputation as an especially difficult instrument and illustrates how oboists and English horn players can overcome common challenges. Leclair draws on her experience as a performer and instructor, offering practical tips and sometimes revolutionary ideas for rethinking oboe pedagogy. Leclair also looks at performance strategies in the areas of equipment maintenance and management, physical health, and performance technique. Her secrets focus on such matters as how to optimize practice sessions, build endurance, improve use of the body when playing, work with reeds, and apply extended techniques. Oboe Secrets provides oboists and English horn players a quick and efficient path to significant improvement—both technically and musically—in their playing.It is the perfect resource for advanced high school oboists, professional performers, music instructors, and avid amateur musicians.

Modeled on the brilliant approach first formulated by distinguished professor music and master clarinetist Michele Gingras in her Clarinet Secrets and More Clarinet Secrets (both available from Scarecrow Press), Tracy Heavner's Saxophone Secrets provides advanced saxophonists with 60 performance secrets that will assist in their musical development. This work is the result of 30 years of personal teaching and performance experience. Heavner offers both intermediate players and advanced professionals a wide variety of techniques, which will greatly improve any saxophonist's performance ability. Designed to be the go-to hands-on guide for practitioners, Heavner's strategies consider a vast array of issues for the saxophonist who needs to take that next big step up. Beginning chapters consider various brands of saxophones, mouthpieces, ligatures, reeds, and maintenance techniques that reflect the standard practices and expectations of the advanced performer. The secrets that follow develop and improve embouchure, tone, articulation, and finger technique, allowing saxophonists to analyze their own playing and adjust accordingly. Heavner pulls back the curtain further to introduce those secrets for developing the altissimo register and extended saxophone techniques, from circular breathing and multiphonics to slap and flutter tonguing--all absolute necessities for saxophonists seeking to play contemporary classical, jazz, or commercial music. Finally, Heavner concludes by letting musicians in on those little-revealed secrets for taking their saxophones on the road. Saxophone Secrets is the ideal work for saxophonists, saxophone instructors, band teachers, and anyone looking to improve their saxophone performance skills or those of their students.

The second edition of Clarinet Secrets provides techniques, tips, and guides based on Michele Gingras' 30 years of experience teaching in the clarinet studio. Discussed in a straightforward way, the concepts are explained clearly and illustrated with photos, diagrams, and musical examples--perfect for students, professionals, and instructors.

Titles in Dictionaries for the Modern Musician series offer both the novice and the advanced artist key information designed to convey the field of study and performance for a major instrument or instrument class, as well as the workings of musicians in areas from conducting to composing. Unlike other encyclopedic works, contributions to this series focus primarily on the knowledge required by the contemporary musical student or performer. Each dictionary covers topics from instrument parts to playing technique and major works to key figures. A must-have for any musician’s personal library! The clarinet has played an important role in all kinds of music, ranging from classical to jazz to the traditional music of varying ethnicities and traditions. A beloved band instrument to thousands of school children, the clarinet is also capable of capturing some of the most sublime musical moments in the hands of professional artists. It has found a home in any number of venues, from the great symphonic concert halls to local jazz clubs, from the streets of New Orleans to the film studios of Hollywood. In A Dictionary for the Modern Clarinet, scholar and musician Jane Ellsworth offers lovers of the clarinet the premiere reference book for information about this remarkable instrument. Containing over 400 terms, Ellsworth covers the clarinet's history (including both modern and historical instruments, common and rare), acoustics, construction, fingering systems and mechanisms, and techniques, as well as its more important performers, makers, and scholars. A Dictionary for the Modern Clarinetist will delight clarinet aficionados at all levels. For knowledgeable professionals it will serve as a quick and handy reference guide, useful in the high school or college library and the home teaching studio alike; students and amateurs will find it accessible and full of fascinating information about the world of the clarinet.